


The Things You Didn't Say

by WritingCyan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, discussion of consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-09 02:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20846099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingCyan/pseuds/WritingCyan
Summary: “Why didn’t you say anything?”Cody made a soft huff of amusement, like he couldn't believe it'd taken Obi-Wan this long to figure it out. His hand came up to curl around the back of Obi-Wan's neck, thumb rubbing soothing circles. “I thought I did, sir.”





	The Things You Didn't Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DepressingGreenie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DepressingGreenie/gifts).

> Written for the Clone Wars Saved Exchange. Prompt: "Obi-Wan is injured, Cody looks after him. Likes: Get-together, injury/recovery, hurt/comfort."
> 
> As it turned out, Cody needed a little TLC himself as well.

Obi-Wan woke, slowly, by hard-won degrees, pushing through the pain and the lingering fog of exhaustion by sheer force of will. There was no part of his body that didn’t hurt. The faint nausea of anodyne drugs was an almost imperceptible discomfort by comparison, but much more worrying than the pain. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been injured badly enough to need more than a simple healing trance. 

With some effort, he managed to wiggle his toes and twitch his fingers, which meant the most important bits of him were still attached. However, since someone had evidently looked at him, panicked, and loaded him up with enough soporifics to tranquilise a wookie, he probably wouldn’t want to look in a mirror anytime soon. 

At least the side effects weren't anything he hadn't experienced before, making him confident the drugs were GAR-issue, not CIS knockoffs, which suggested he was in a safe place and not in a cell as a prisoner of war. He'd definitely been given perigen, from the way his mouth felt like he’d chewed sand, and comaren, from the bitter aftertaste, and nyex, or maybe hypnocane, or both, if he’d been hurt badly enough to look like he needed both, and he suspected he might have been from the way his head pounded like he’d taken a blaster bolt just below the left ear and his ribs kept stabbing him with angry jolts of pain like they blamed him for breathing.

Whatever he’d been given, it definitely wasn’t a happy-hour cocktail recommended by the Republic Medical Advisory Board, which would explain why waking up was such a struggle. Whoever had administered the pain killers hadn’t gotten the dosage right, had probably just slapped on a couple clone-issue patches in the field and never mind that the standard trooper outweighed him in muscle and bone and had double the metabolic rate of baseline humans thanks to Kaminoan gengineering. A shiny trooper, maybe, or a medic unused to treating non-clones. Obi-Wan could imagine Cody’s reaction to someone OD’ing his Jedi General on opioids and felt, despite the roiling in his guts, just a little bit sorry for the clone responsible, who would be feeling a _lot_ sorry for himself once Cody got hold of him.

The effects were wearing off now, in any case, and as he rose from the murky depths of sleep and surfaced into consciousness, he found that he was shivering, inexplicably, despite not feeling cold at all. That wasn’t a common side effect of anything in the GAR-issue medkit he’d tried before, and neither were the nightmares. He’d dreamt of falling, drowning, lost in an ocean of freezing dark water— 

No, not a nightmare, a _memory._ As soon as he realised, it all slotted into place: the Separatist attack on Tipoca City and the Kaminoan cloning facilities, his duel with Grievous, sliding off the edge of a toppling platform. Luck had saved him, luck and the Living Force. He _had_ fallen, but he hadn’t drowned; an aiwha had caught him, answering his call, and then white-armoured hands had reached up and lifted him from its back, and white-armoured bodies had shielded him from the stinging wave-spray while a vocoder-distorted voice called urgently for the marshall commander’s attention, and— 

—and that was the moment his brain had caught up and realised that, no matter how, ahem, _intensely_ he felt about Grievous threatening to kill the clones under his command, he didn’t in fact have Anakin’s raw power, and he didn’t quite have Great Grandmaster Yoda’s fine control either, and he _really_ hoped Anakin hadn’t seen him faint in Cody’s arms like a novice bound for the Service Corp.

Had he really Force-thrown 700 Coruscanti weight-units of Kaleeshi cyborg down the entire length of a corridor in a fit of emotions entirely unbecoming of a Jedi Master? No wonder his head felt like someone had run a lightsaber through it. Oh, he could hear Master Yoda’s lecture in his mind: _Force overexertion, not without consequence it is; taken lightly, it should not be._ How many times had he told Anakin that pain was the price a Padawan paid for overconfidence? 

Kriffing _ow._ He needed a quart of bacta and a shot of Corellian whiskey, or possibly the other way around, preferably before attempting to stand up. _Definitely_ before facing Anakin. 

He blinked the blurriness from his eyes and dared a quick glance around now that he no longer felt in immediate danger of voiding his stomach. His soaked-through robes had been removed and replaced with soft maroon slacks — the uniform worn by clone cadets. He was lying on a bed in a room he’d never seen before. For a moment, he wondered if he’d hit his head when he’d slid off the platform, then realised everything seemed disconcertingly out of proportions because the room had been designed for non-humans. The bed was long and narrow to fit the slender body of a Kaminoan, the walls bare and featureless only because he couldn’t see in the ultraviolet spectrum. He was grateful that whoever had put him there had opted to keep the room’s painfully bright illuminations off; even at half-glow, the ultraviolet wavebands hurt human eyes. Soft grey sunlight diffused in through a domed window that took up one entire wall of the room. Outside, the silhouette of the _Negotiator_ hung in low orbit against the overcast sky, its outline pockmarked by ion canon and turbolaser fusillades. He was in Tipoca City, then, in a dignitaries’ stateroom. 

Cody was sitting next to the bed, still wearing his armour. It'd acquired a couple of new scorch marks across the chest plate since the last time Obi-Wan had seen him. Cody had pulled over one of the awkward Kaminoan chairs and erected a berm of datapads and stapled flimsies on the floor around him. His DC-15s and the hilt of Obi-Wan's lightsaber were tucked between one cuisse and the rounded side of the chair, within easy reach. It seemed Obi-Wan had missed whatever happened had after Grievous’ retreat, but if Cody was here and not on the front lines somewhere, that had to mean the battle was over and they’d won. Obi-Wan felt a stab of guilty conscience. Cody had been out there, putting himself in the line of fire right alongside his fellow troopers, but a Marshall Commander’s job didn’t end with the fighting. After the action phase came the slough. 

Unaware that he was being watched, Cody put down his data stylus with a soft groan and lifted off his helmet to rub at his eyes.

“When was the last time you slept?” Obi-Wan asked, and Cody, his unflappable clone commander, actually _jumped_ in his seat. Even through his headache, Obi-Wan was surprised to feel a wash of unfamiliar emotions flow over him in the Force: the pain of bruises, grief, a bone-deep exhaustion… shifting, near-instantly, to intense relief, good-humoured exasperation, a warm fondness shading into— but Cody blinked and the feelings dissipated in the Force like blood in an ocean of water. 

“I’m fine, sir,” Cody lied. He leaned over and picked up a metal flask from a low table that was probably a repurposed Kaminoan footstool, unscrewing the lid deftly despite his armoured gauntlets. Obi-Wan smelled the perfumed fragrance of millaflowers and dried shuura: his favourite Nabooan tea blend, a gift from Senator Amidala. 

“For your head, sir,” Cody said, holding out a ceramic cup. There was just the one, borrowed from the officers' mess on the _Negotiator_ judging by the shape and pattern of it; Kaminoan drinking vessels were flat like saucers and poorly suited for stubby-fingered human hands. Cody had to have someone bring it off-ship, along with a box of dried herbs, the flask of hot water, and the tiny aurum infuser he liked to use for brewing Obi-Wan's tea. 

Obi-Wan sat up carefully, waited until the planet stopped spinning in tight little circles like a child's gyro-toy and settled back into its customary orbit, and accepted the cup, his fingers brushing against Cody’s. It was how soldiers were trained to transfer objects, hand touching hand, to coordinate the motion between them while wearing armoured gloves so they wouldn't drop whatever they were passing along — Obi-Wan had observed both nitrile-gloved doctors in the Halls of Healing and Mandalorian warriors in _beskar'gam_ do it as well — and it was how Cody always handed him a cup of tea, waiting patiently for Obi-Wan to lift it from the curve of Cody's palm, their fingers briefly overlapping. Usually, it felt almost indecently intimate to Obi-Wan, as close as he ever got to holding Cody's hand. Not this time, though.

Obi-Wan frowned. “You’re shaking.”

Was that why he'd woken up trembling himself? A sensory Force-echo? He'd never picked up anything like that from Cody before. Cody was always so quiet in the Force, almost as if he didn't want Obi-Wan to know he even _had_ feelings, except he never made an effort to conceal the dry humour in his voice when responding to his General's witty remarks.

Cody’s hand curled reflexively against the side of his chair. “Just coming off the stims, sir.” He sported two time-stamp patches on his left rerebrace — one charcoal, the other almost faded enough to match the plastoid armour — from staggered gylocal shots, the GAR’s most potent mix of pain blockers and stimulants. Cody had mentioned more than once how much he hated using combat stims, complaining that the hangover from the drug’s toxic metabolites messed with his post-op paperwork. 

“That bad out there?” Obi-Wan asked sympathetically. 

“You try keeping up with Rex’s lot, sir. I’m recommending a couple of them for ARC training.”

Obi-Wan caught the subtle meaning. The Third Systems Army had vacant specialist positions to fill. Whoever hadn’t reported in by now was assumed to be biowaste buried in the rubble of the broken domes, and Cody was in the process of restructuring the corps around whoever was left. 

Obi-Wan stood up gingerly, mindful of his bruised ribs, and walked to the window. On the platform below, illuminated by four towering light casters haloed by seaspray, black body bags lay on the ferrocrete decking. More were being added by pairs of clones in unmarked white armour. Too many to count, in neat lines, drill ground perfect even in death. 

Cody joined him, hands clasped behind his back. Obi-Wan recalled the first time they’d met, after Geonosis, when Cody had been formally presented to him as his Marshall Commander, another weapon in the Jedi Order's arsenal to wield against the enemies of the Republic and, Kaminoan prime minister Lama Su assured him, far more deadly that the blade of a lightsaber. Obi-Wan had doubted it then; he didn't anymore. 

In the van sunlight, Cody looked tired and grey. He’d never looked less like a weapon and more like just a man. 

“My condolences,” Obi-Wan said, and not just for the loss of Cody’s men. For the war, for the Republic who used the clones so casually. For being unable to save more of them. 

Again that flash of pain-grief in the Force, just for a second, as Cody's gaze swept over the silent parade of his fallen brothers. It made Obi-Wan ache to embrace him, comfort him, a familiar flare of love and thwarted longing. 

He’d thought it a simple infatuation at first. The clones were all tall and strong and cleanly built, with the handsome features of their progenitor and their uncomplicated, bright souls unblemished by the darkness that had shadowed Jango’s presence in the Force; it had been no surprise to him that he found them physically appealing. He’d acknowledged his attraction, meditated on it, and expected it to go away in the same way all temptations faded in time, and it had, save for one instance: with every moment he’d spent with Cody at his side, he had only become more fond of his clone commander. Cody, who seemed to understand him like no one else he’d ever met, who picked up on his subtle digs at Anakin when even his former Padawan took his words at face value, whose mouth curled up in sly amusement at his Jedi Generals’ bickering, who seemed able at times, uncannily, to read Obi-Wan’s mind even without the aid of the Force.

He’d caught Cody watching him too, shy glances, helmet turned at an angle that let him follow Obi-Wan with his eyes without being obvious about it - Obi-Wan had made up an excuse to borrow an ARF helmet from storage and studied himself in a mirror to check the sightlines. Late at night, when Obi-Wan was poring over status reports to the Council, Cody would appear as if summoned by the Force with a cup of hot tea or a ration bar or a blister-pack of pain killers for Obi-Wan’s near-constant tension headaches. Once, Cody had touched his shoulder gently, then his neck, rubbing soothing circles just below Obi-Wan’s hairline until it was all Obi-Wan could do not to moan from sheer relief. Had Cody been anyone else, that would have been lightyears past flirtation, but Cody’s Force presence was never anything but patient anticipation, awaiting Obi-Wan’s next orders. 

Sometimes, like now, Obi-Wan thought he might feel something, some ripple of stronger emotions, but it was faint, like listening to someone talk several rooms away, and if Obi-Wan even so much as glanced at Cody it was always instantly silenced.

Suppressing the urge to do something — another thing — entirely unbecoming of a Jedi, Obi-Wan instead held out the steaming cup of tea. “Here, take it. You need it more than I do.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Cody said automatically. He lifted the cup hesitantly. It occurred to Obi-Wan that, despite all the times Cody had brewed tea for him, he might never have tasted it. Cody touched the cup to his lips and sipped, almost reverently. His face became a blank slate to match his Force signature, and the corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth curled up unbidden.

“It may be an acquired taste,” he offered. Cody immediately took another sip. Obi-Wan could see the mild analgesic from the steeped milla take effect, smoothing a few lines of pain from Cody’s brow. It took a lot of effort not to reach out and soothe away the rest of them with gentle strokes of his thumb.

“What will happen to them?” he asked instead, looking outside again. 

“Disposal at sea, sir. The processing plants don’t have sufficient capacity to handle this number of casualties.”

“What kind of processing — No, don’t tell me, I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know.” Obi-Wan sighed. “How can I help?” 

“I have prepared a list of promotions pending your approval, sir.” Cody unclipped a datapad from a mag clamp on his belt and handed it over. 

Obi-Wan skimmed the list. “Waxer and Boil? I thought you’d send them for ARC-training with Rex’s pair.”

“I need them here. We’re short on experienced troopers as it is. I’d like to promote them to lieutenants and give them a platoon each. Let them wrangle the influx of rookies to Ghost Company.”

“Good choice. Those two do seem to handle the young ones well.” Obi-Wan signed off on it. He looked at the casualty list again, tapped on a report attached to one of the names he recognised: Captain Crys. Crushed to death under a falling section of dome sheeting alongside Captain Jax of the 1st Airborne, Troopers Mortar and Ate of Parjai Squad, and nineteen unnamed cadets they’d been leading to safety. 

A second tab on the datapad held a requisition form; Cody was requesting the surviving cadets, CTs 5-2309-11 through 56 save for the empty spaces left by their dead batchers, for the 501st. Avenging their brothers’ deaths, they had lured a squad of Superdroids in close and dropped another dome plate on them. Force knew Rex needed the additional troops, and the twenty-three oh-nines had the guts to do well in Torrent Company. They were two months past their eighth birthday, just barely old enough to fill out the armour of the dead men they’d replace. Obi-Wan approved the request, and then went through Cody’s list and approved everything else too.

He traded back the datapad for the empty tea cup, ready to make a quip about Cody's newly-acquired taste for tea, but something made him pause and glance down. There were reddish smudges on the cup's white glace, sticky to the touch, where he'd curved his hand around it to take it from Cody. Cody’s right vambrace and handplate were edged in dark red alongside the orange; it had dripped from there to Obi-Wan's hand. Obi-Wan had seen that before and knew what it meant: Cody had taken a hit from something non-cauterising, maybe a piece of shrapnel dislodged by a stray blaster shot. His bodysuit had kept the bleeding temporarily contained, but it was leaking now, funnelled by the grooves in his armour. Obi-Wan's gaze darted automatically to Cody’s right rerebrace, but it was blank white; no triage marks. 

“Why haven’t you seen a medic?” Obi-Wan asked, aghast. Post-op med checks were mandatory for all troopers using combat stims. Gylocal in particular was infamous for masking hypovolaemic shock; it made a soldier feel invincible, ignoring all wounds, until he dropped dead from blood loss. 

"It's nothing, sir. Others needed the medics' attention more than me," Cody said. “I’m fine, sir, really.” 

He _wasn't_ fine. How hadn’t Obi-Wan sensed this? He’d been sipping tea and signing paperwork and bleating condolences, deaf and blind to Cody’s pain. The thought of losing Cody — the thought that he might be losing Cody _right now,_ to an insidious wound dealt by an enemy already fled beyond his reach — was unbearable. _Unacceptable._ To the nine hells with Jedi non-attachment; he was already compromised, had been for a long time. It had been the threat against Cody's life which had triggered that moment of cold rage during the battle, had bent the Force to his will and let him throw off Grievous when they both thought him defeated. 

Now it gave him the strength to reach out and put his hand on Cody’s vambrace in a gesture more revealing than he'd ever allowed himself. “Please, Cody,” he said, anguished, “at least let me have a look.” 

“If you insist, sir,” Cody said, and let Obi-Wan guide him into the ‘fresher niche annexed to the suite. The irised door swished closed as they stepped through, and suddenly it was just the two of them. Obi-Wan let go of Cody's arm, self-conscious. He busied himself grabbing a pile of soft, folded cloth which he assumed to be towels. 

Cody pulled off his battered, blood-streaked gloves and hesitated, unsure where to put them, like he was afraid of damaging the white enamel tiles despite the fact that he was, objectively, the most expensive thing in the room. Eventually, he laid the gloves on the edge of a concavity which Obi-Wan guessed might be a wash basin and started fiddling with the plasteel clasp for his right vambrace, but his hands were shaking too much from the stims — and maybe from blood loss — to thumb it open. 

“Let me,” Obi-Wan said.

He carefully removed the armour plates one by one, feeling for the hidden clasps, and stacked them like he remembered seeing the troops do it when they didn't have access to armour lockers. The shoulder bells and the back and chest plates first, then the vambraces and rerebraces, sliding them off carefully. He had to step in close to open the buckle at the front of Cody's utility belt. Close enough to feel Cody's breath on his face for a moment when he bent forward to study the interlocking plasteel sections.

"Sir—" Cody said, and then, apparently at a loss for words, fell silent and let Obi-Wan work until Cody was left standing in only his blacks and boots. Obi-Wan reached up to undo the gription seams of his bodysuit last of all, parting the symbol of the Republic cogwheel right down the middle, and pushed it off his shoulders.

Cody's right arm was smeared with blood. Obi-Wan soaked a towel and gently cleaned it away, careful not to agitate the still-bleeding laceration across the crook of Cody's elbow, in the vulnerable gap where his armour plates hadn't quite met. It was long but shallow, cutting across two superficial veins but leaving the tendons and bones underneath untouched, looking much worse at first glance than it actually was. Without the neoprene pulling at it with every motion Cody made, the blood was already slowing. Cody _was_ fine; he'd have another scar to show for this, but he'd heal up in short time. Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief, releasing his fear into the Force, and stepped back a pace to look for other injuries.

The black bodysuit hung from Cody's waist, reminding Obi-Wan of the body bags on the platform, but Cody was warm and alive under it. Obi-wan hadn’t seen this much of him before. He was surprised to find that Cody, like most of his brothers, had opted for personal tattoos. A list of names, clones from his batch, maybe, or old friends, ran down his side, and, over his heart, a red crescent outlining a yellow semicircle. Obi-Wan recognised the roundel of the Open Circle Armada, but, strangely, only half of it—

Obi-Wan froze. His hand rose, unbidden, to rest against the tattoo. They had said it in jest, at first, until the troops had picked up the idea and run with it, that the emblem of the Open Circle Armada represented himself and Anakin, two halves of a whole. Most of the clone pilots proudly wore roundel tattoos, to match their ships and starfighters. But Cody's tattoo only had one half. Obi-Wan's half. Like he'd wanted to brand himself with Obi-Wan's mark like he had the names of his closest brothers. Cody sighed, a silent exhalation of breath, and leaned into the touch, the thump of his heartbeat adrenaline-fast under Obi-Wan’s hand.

Obi-Wan looked at his hand on Cody’s chest and thought, stupidly, _oh._ Cody was a Marshall Commander, a tactical genius, and he knew Obi-Wan better than anyone. He wouldn't have made the rookie mistake of forgetting the post-battle check; it would have been a deliberate oversight. He'd known, _of course_ he'd known, that neglecting to have a minor injury triaged would make Obi-Wan offer to tend it. His hands hadn’t been shaking so badly before, when he poured the tea; he'd been exaggerating, to prompt Obi-Wan's offer of help undressing him, Obi-Wan putting his hands on him, finally, after all the months Obi-Wan had spent imagining it and telling himself it would never happen. 

Obi-Wan looked up at him, exasperated. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Cody made a soft huff of amusement, like he couldn't believe it'd taken Obi-Wan this long to figure it out. His hand came up to curl around the back of Obi-Wan's neck, thumb rubbing soothing circles. “I thought I did, sir.” 

Obi-Wan sighed. “But I never felt anything from you in the Force; I still don't. I keep worrying I’ve made a misstep and you’re just too polite to let me know.”

“Never, sir,” Cody insisted, digging in his fingers a little for emphasis. “But I know the emotions of others can be… distracting… to Jedi, sir. That’s why clone units serving in proximity to Jedi have been instructed in mental dissembling techniques. Our designers believed it would be an impediment to the most efficient use of clone troops if their generals felt everything they did.” 

Obi-Wan's heart sank. “We would be reluctant to send you out to die if we knew how you felt about it, you mean.”

“That’s not what I meant, sir. I know you don’t risk our lives needlessly.” Cody hesitated, unsure. “The way it was explained to us, Jedi don’t just _know_ the emotions of others, they _feel_ them. If I'm injured, I don’t want you to carry my pain as well as your own, sir. And…” He paused, let his hand fall from Obi-Wan's neck. “Sir, it wouldn't just be _unethical_ to let my emotions influence your decision-making, it would be—” He swallowed. "It would not be what you wanted." 

“But I _want_ to feel you in the Force,” Obi-Wan protested. “I’m not a youngling, Cody. I promise you, I won’t be overwhelmed by your emotions.”

Cody gave him a half-smile, a little overbearing, a little challenging. “I think you would be, sir.”

“Really,” Obi-Wan said dryly, rising to the challenge. “Try me.”

“I did warn you, sir,” Cody said, and exhaled, tension in his body dropping away, and suddenly the Force was flooded with emotions, a roaring, rushing torrent of affection, attraction, desire, a desperate need to touch and be be touched, to grasp and hold and never let go.

“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, out loud this time, and it was all he could do to cling to Cody and let it flow over him, every moment of painful yearning he'd felt reflected back at him. When it passed and he could breathe again, he found himself pressed up against Cody and kissing him, desperately, breathlessly. He could feel Cody's smile against his lips and in the Force, no barriers between them anymore.

Cody pulled back enough to make eye contact. “Are you— Do you feel all right?”

“I'm fine, Cody,” Obi-Wan said, fondly and a little teasingly, and pulled him in for another kiss. “More than fine. You have no idea how long I've wanted this.”

Cody snorted. “So why didn't _you_ say something, sir?”

Because of the Jedi Code. Because of the GAR regulations against fraternisation, because falling in love would be too inconvenient, because he'd thought he would have time later, after the war, to pursue these buried sentiments — because he hadn't truly understood just how small the chance was that they'd both live to see an age of peace in the galaxy, until he'd seen those countless black body bags and imagined Cody in one of them. "Because I'm a fool," Obi-Wan said. “And because I was afraid. Lama Su told me all clones are unquestioningly obedient. I didn’t want to give you the impression that it was your duty to serve me as… as my lover.”

"I serve you because it's my duty, sir, but no one has ever ordered me to make you tea, or save you the nuuna-flavour ration packs, or cover for you that time General Skywalker found out you threw his dried doop bug snacks out an airlock—"

"Those things were _vile,_" Obi-Wan muttered under his breath.

"—I do those things because I _want_ to, sir. Because I care about you," Cody continued. "Clones follow orders, even when we don’t like them. That’s what soldiers do. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know the difference between ‘yes sir’ and ‘hell yes’.”

“And if I asked you to kiss me again, what would you say?” Obi-Wan asked. He could see the laughter dancing in Cody's eyes.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Granted.”

“Hell _kriffing_ yes,” Cody growled, pulling him into another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic originally had an E-rated coda, but I wasn't sure if the recipient would be comfortable with explicit descriptions and dithered until the last moment before deciding to err on the side of caution. DepressingGreenie, please let me know in a comment if you'd like me to edit the smut back in? :)


End file.
